The Mobile Thumb Zone

Today we are going to talk about the ‘’Thumb Zone’’ on mobile devices and why it is so important. In 2019, almost everybody has a mobile phone, for some people, it is the most important thing in their lives. They search, communicate, navigate and even buy products with their phones.

What is the Thumb Zone?

The Thumb Zone refers to the surface area of a mobile device screen that is most reachable and accessible by your thumb. These areas provide the most convenience and ease of interaction for audiences to engage with elements in your website. You can see in the image below a rough idea of how your thumb naturally rests on the mobile device screen.

Content and visual elements are most reachable in the middle green parts, whereas the yellow and red sections require users to stretch their thumb to reach the content. The way you hold your hand also dictates somewhat where these thumb hot spots will be. So, make sure your ‘’Menu’’ or ‘’Call-to-actions’’ buttons are not in the hard area!

This will have an effect on the click-through rate.

In the Google Chrome 68 update, we can see there are no functions in the bottom. There are only some functions on top nearby the URL, however, this is the hard zone as we saw in the image before.

On the right picture (Chrome 69), we can see that the options have been moved to the bottom which is a more natural zone. As you can quickly realize, the Thumb Zone is an aspect of user experience (UX) that is easily overlooked. The Thumb zone is the key for a website or applications to have good navigation. If you have a drop down menu or functions in the thumb zone it will be a lot easier for the visitor.

So, the thumb zone is important because it gives you:

A higher click-through rate

More conversions

A decrease in the bounce rate

To conclude, you need to consider the concept of Thumb Zones when thinking about the layout and navigation of your mobile website. This concept should be a collaborative task between web designers and content developers in order to properly optimize your website or application. Still having trouble with designing your website according to through the Thumb Zone?